LA Documents Show Vatican Slowed Abuse Cases

Press TV IRAN
February 17, 2013

http://www.presstv.com/usdetail/289487.html


Recently released documents in Los Angeles suggest Vatican bureaucracy hampered bishops trying to deal with allegations of abusive priests.

The documents show Cardinal Roger Mahony's frustration as he tried to ensure one priest, the Rev. Kevin Barmasse, did not return to pastoral work.

Barmasse, who allegedly abused at least eight teenage boys after plying them with alcohol, appealed to Rome.

"Given the pastoral situation in the United States today, which is all too well known, bishops need to be able to act quickly and decisively in cases of alleged clerical misconduct to assure the People of God that their rights are being fully protected," Mahony wrote in a 1994 letter to a Vatican official the cardinal had met with during a visit to Rome four months earlier.

Under Catholic canon law, bishops can remove priests from parishes but only the pope may remove them from the priesthood. Barmasse was eventually unfrocked, after more than a decade.

John Allen, a correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter, told the Times the delay was not unusual.

"This was not just Mahony's experience," Allen said. "Anyone in the world who had dealings with the Vatican in the '80s and '90s was frustrated -- who's in charge, what's the procedure, how long it took."

Bishops had to deal with multiple agencies, including the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed at the time by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI. Mahony retired in 2011. UPI

FACTS & FIGURES

On Jan. 31, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles released 12,000 pages of internal files on priests accused of sexually abusing children. NY Times

On the same day, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez announced dramatic actions in response to the priest abuse scandal, saying that Cardinal Roger Mahony would be stripped of public duties. LA Times

The Catholic Church has been rocked in recent decades by accusations that it tried to cover up the sexual abuse of children by priests and has paid out billions in settlements to abuse victims, bankrupting several U.S. dioceses. Daily Star

Sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has been widely reported throughout the world, with the countries of Canada, Ireland, United States, United Kingdom, Mexico, Belgium, France, Germany and Australia receiving the most attention. The United States and Ireland are the only countries that conducted nationwide inquiries. digitaljournal.com

In the U.S., Ireland, the Channel Islands, the list seems to go on and on -- new sordid stories of child sexual abuse are being investigated, at times, linking to a disturbing hierarchy of silence in institutions which were considered "sacred," -- be it the Catholic Church, the BBC or even Penn State football. The Huffington Post